I'm a hard worker and love my work. I have felt pulled toward work. And it's a pull I have ferociously had to counter to make room for my family.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
Paradoxically, those who call for family values also tout the wonders of an unregulated market without observing the subtle cultural links between the family they seek to regulate and the market they hold free.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contradiction between advocating for family values while simultaneously supporting a free market that can undermine those values.
Arlie Russell Hochschild's quote draws attention to the inherent contradictions in social attitudes towards family values and market dynamics. It suggests that while some individuals promote the importance of family and its regulations, they often overlook how an unregulated market can impact familial relationships and societal norms. The quote invites reflection on the intertwined nature of cultural values and economic systems, urging a recognition of how both can influence one another.
Themes
FamilyValuesMarketCultureRegulation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a discussion on the influence of capitalism on social structures at a community meeting.
More from Arlie Russell Hochschild
All quotes →The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
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I was brought up in a family which valued natural history. Both my parents knew the names of all the British wildflowers, so as we went walking the country, I was constantly being exposed to a natural history sort of knowledge.
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